Magic Strikes

individual fights. They like flash, but they are efficient.”

We all had a job to do. Mine was simple: Mart. I didn’t want Mart. I wanted Cesare. But Jim’s strategy made sense and I was going to follow it. I’d get a chance against Cesare. I wanted to kill him entirely too much to be denied.

But none of the tactics, none of the strategy, mattered until I knew what sort of blade Hugh had given to the Reapers. He had had ample opportunity to transfer the blade to the rakshasas before last night. He knew they wouldn’t be able to resist using the sword, and he didn’t want its power known until today.

Roland had made several weapons. All were devastating. Just thinking on it made me grit my teeth. He must’ve given Hugh the order to assure the rakshasas win at any cost. I wondered if it grated on Hugh.

At two minutes till noon we lined up and marched into the Pit. Sunshine poured on us through the skylights. The shapeshifters came out in warrior form, Raphael included, with Curran in the lead. Andrea carried a crossbow and enough firearms to take on a small country. Not satisfied with her own carrying capacity, she had loaded Dali with spare ammo.

We crossed the floor of the Arena and stepped onto the sand.

Across from us seven Reapers stood in two rows. My gaze skipped over them and fastened on Mart in the center. His sword was sheathed. Damn it. What is it? What did he give you?

I surveyed the rest. Cesare on Mart’s left. The huge rakshasa, still wearing his human skin, carried two khandas: heavy, three-foot-long double-edged swords. I’d handled khandas before; not my cup of tea: too heavy and oddly sharpened.

On Mart’s right stood the rakshasa’s Stone. Ten feet tall and thick, he had the head of a small elephant, complete with wide fans of ears, but instead of a dark hide, his body had the sickly yellow tint of a man stricken with jaundice. A chain mail hauberk of yellow metal suspiciously resembling gold hung from his shoulders. I guessed even elephants liked to go into battle color-coordinated.

On the elephant’s shoulder perched a slender creature: hairless, dark red like raw liver, its bony limbs tipped with black claws. It resembled a lemur the size of a short human. Two vast wings spread from its shoulders. His arms held two brutal talwars: short, wide swords.

The second line of Reapers consisted of three fighters. The first was the woman who’d delivered the hair to me. The second was a humanoid thing with four arms, clothed in a reptilian skin of mottled green and brown. The third was Livie.

The reptilian thing was abnormally slender, green, and armed with two bows. Livie had a straight sword and looked scared to death. Her head had been shaved bald. It brought my rage back with crystal clarity. Sure, what she did was stupid and weak. But she was no fighter. They had no right to bring her into this. She didn’t deserve it.

Livie met my gaze. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

They had hunted us like meat. They’d hurt Derek. They’d broken his bones, poured molten electrum on his face, tortured him, and laughed. They killed shapeshifters and forced young girls into the Pit. Their existence was an injustice. They deserved to die. And I would enjoy this. Dear God, I will enjoy this.

The magic was in full swing. The crowd waited, electric with anticipation. A smile blazed across Mart’s face. His blade was still sheathed.

Curran shifted his clawed feet in the sand next to me.

Above us on the balcony, Sophia, the producer, held up an enormous yellow stone. Luminescent, lemon yellow, shaped like a tear, it shone and played in her hands like a living current of gold, capturing the light and tossing it back in a dazzling display of fire.

Sophia raised it above her head—her arms quaked with strain—and shouted. “Let the Games begin!”

The rakshasas’ mage weaved her arms through the air.

I swung my two swords, Slayer in my right hand and the tactical blade in my left.

Mart reached for his sheath, clamped it, and slid the blade free, tossing the sheath onto the sand.

A wide blade stared at me, red like the finest ruby.

Everything slowed to a crawl, and in the ensuing stillness, my heartbeat boomed through me, impossibly loud. The Scarlet Star. One of Roland’s hellish personal weapons, a sword he had forged over five years out of his own blood. It had the power to fire thirteen bursts of magic. Like enchanted saw blades, they would lock onto their targets, slice through anything in their path, and cleave their objective in half. They couldn’t be dodged. They couldn’t be blocked. The blade itself couldn’t be broken by an ordinary weapon. Even Curran couldn’t snap it.

We would die instantly. Curran might survive long enough to be torn apart by the rakshasas.

I couldn’t let him die.

I whipped about, slow as if underwater, and saw him looking back at me with gray eyes from a monster’s face.

What do I do? How can I keep him alive?

It will be okay, Curran mouthed, but I couldn’t hear him, all sound blocked by my panic.

I turned back. Mart gripped the sword with both hands. The red blade glistened, as if wet with blood. I had to destroy it, because if he completed a strike, all of us would die.

Blood. It was forged out of Roland’s blood, the same blood that now coursed through my veins. There might be a way to destroy the blade after all. If I could take possession of the sword.

The gong boomed. The world leapt back to its normal speed.

I charged.

Mart began to raise the sword for an overhead strike.

I had never run so fast in my life. The sand blurred. The blade point loomed before me, rising. I grasped the crimson blade and shoved it into my stomach.

It hurt. My blood drenched the red substance of the sword. Mart stared at me, stunned. I grasped Mart’s hand and pushed the sword deeper into me. The point broke through my back. Deeper. All the way to the hilt.

The blade sat inside me, a wedge of hot agony. My blood coated the metal, forging a link with Roland’s. Around me the shapeshifters crashed into the rakshasas. I whispered a power word. “Hessaad.” Mine.

Magic surged inward from the surface of my skin, from the tips of my fingers and toes, and locked onto the sword. The blade sparked, sending jolts of pain through me. It felt as though a clump of barbed wire were being drawn through my gut. I clawed on to reality, trying not to pass out. The Arena reeled, spinning in a calico whirlpool, and through the smudge of faces, I saw Hugh d’Ambray on his feet, staring at me as if he had seen a demon.

My biological father’s blood reacted with mine and recognized it. The sword was mine. It would obey. Now.

“Ud,” I whispered. Die. The power word that never worked. To will something to die, one must first have complete possession of it.

Magic tore from me. The sword buckled in my body, like a living creature, vibrating, striving to break free. Agony flooded me in a brilliant burst. I screamed.

The sword shattered. Pieces of the blade floated to the ground in a fine red powder. Inside my body the part of the sword that had been in me disintegrated into dust and mixed with my blood, spreading through my body. Roland’s blood, scalding me as if my insides had been dropped into boiling oil. So much power . . .

The fire melted my legs. I fell down onto the sand. The inferno inside me was cooking me alive, wringing tears from my eyes. I tried to move, but my muscles refused to obey. Every cell of my body was on fire.

The whole thing had taken five, six seconds from start to finish, enough time to impale myself on the blade and utter two words. Hugh had been right—I would die today. But the unbreakable sword was shattered and Curran would live. And so would the rest of them. Not bad for five seconds of work.

A horrible roar shook the Arena. I jerked my head. Curran had seen me fall and charged over to me. The elephant thundered to intercept him, and Curran disemboweled him with one strike, leaping past him. No need to hurry, Your Majesty. It’s too late for me anyway.

Mart dropped the useless hilt and grabbed me, his eyes brimming with fury. Curran lunged for me.

But Mart shot straight up like an arrow. Curran’s clawed hand caught empty sand. He’d missed me by half a second.

Wind fanned my face as Mart flew up. It felt like the afterlife, but I wasn’t dead yet. One doesn’t feel pain in